Hi. I’m Catherine, and I’m a Perfectionist, and yes – the struggle is real!

You have high expectations of yourself and/or the people and world around you. And here’s the thing: underneath it all, you mean well. Better than “well” – you want THE BEST for yourself and everyone and everything around you.

Because you deserve it. Because they deserve it too. Because if you and everyone else did their upmost all the time, we just might live in a better world and live better lives.

We just want to feel good.

It’s so frustrating that nobody else understands that, I know – if they could just do or stop doing that annoying thing, or if the situation could be resolved, then it would be so much better for all of us.

Because they’ve got potential, they could do so much, go so far, achieve all their dreams too. And when they do? We’ll all benefit and will be happier for it.

You love them. You want the best for them.

It sometimes feels like they don’t want the best for themselves.

Why the hell wouldn’t they want the best for themselves?! Don’t they want to be happy?

Yeah, I know – you can lead a horse to water and even chastise it for not drinking, but that gets you nowhere…and underneath it all, you know it.

But sometimes, it’s not even that – it’s just plain embarrassing and humiliating to have to deal with these things and to try and look respectable, to keep your standing within the community, and hope that people won’t gossip about how unruly your children are, or how your partner isn’t good enough for your or is too good for you, or how you said or did something that is brought up over and over again for their own amusement – good grief! She/he isn’t perfect! HAAAAA!

And yet, what you do for and to others is nothing compared to what you do to yourself:

Planning. Revised planning. Execute part of the plan. Scrap it all because it was in the wrong order and you convince yourself it will never be good enough like that. Silently scream at yourself for getting it wrong. Eventually you start again. Good, that bit was perfect. What about the next bit? Uh-oh.

You can’t let it go either. It’s not perfect yet to show the world. They will judge you if you release anything less than perfect – everyone is out to get you one way or another, they’re looking for ways to prove you’ve failed and drag you down into the pits again. Check it over. Check it again. And again. Is it completely impervious?

And if anyone dares to tell you that “you can only do your best”? Poor fools, don’t they realise that it’s not *your best* which counts, but *the best*? They’ve settled for less their entire lives without realising it.

Or have they?…

When did this all begin?

We’ve all got different stories as to where this began. Me? “Good girl” syndrome – it felt like I was loved and appreciated for what I did and not who I was. “Good girls” are loved and will continue to rise, “bad girls” are hated, abandoned, and left to rot with the rest of society.

Really, that’s what it felt like for the majority of my (relatively young) life.

“If I could just be perfect and do everything perfectly – I’ll finally be loved for who I am too.”

Did you ever reach that juncture where it all just got too much, and you just let stuff go and decided to take whatever flack came your way?

How badly did it hurt?

For me, it was excruciating, but I was so fed up of maintaining the perfect shield that I just took it as it came. Everyone important to me telling me that I was weak, that I disappointed them, that they expected so much more of me, from me. I’d burst everyone’s bubbles, and they felt deceived.

Y’see, my particular reason for the perfection deception was in order to feel safe and loved, and in that safety and love?

I hoped I would be happy.

Except that I never truly was happy in all of that.

I read a wonderful email from Tara Mohr in the last couple of weeks about what the first question is that you need to ask yourself, whenever you find yourself in any painful or uncomfortable situation. Tara is currently enrolled on a class on The Power Of Awareness, being run by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and the question we all need to ask ourselves when we are in painful situations is this:

“How do you relate to yourself in your situation?”

When you’re in the heat of the perfectionist “I gotta get everything right and so does everyone and everything else right!” mode: how are you relating to yourself?

Are you angry with yourself (and everyone/thing else)?

Are you telling yourself punishing things about never being good enough, or not being deserving enough if you just can’t do that thing?

Are you witholding the things you want or need in order to achieve some lofty goal you set yourself (or feel that society has set for you)?

Urgh, even writing all of this blog post is stirring all that angst in me, to be honest, and it hurts.

But here’s the thing:

You can always choose to be kinder to yourself.

We can choose to be kinder to ourselves.

And in Tara Mohr’s words, because she summed it up beautifully:

“Whatever you are bothered by the most in yourself or your life, whatever you are struggling with the most, can you see your own suffering, your own trying, your own dear heart, and be kinder to youself about it?”

Because beating yourself and everyone else up around you adds to the misery and suffering of the world. As corny as it sounds, it really does begin within you, and within me.

Perfection is, and always will be, the lie that some of us are more prone to be seduced by than others.

Yet, there are also great qualities in perfectionistic behaviour that are worth keeping:

A willingness and initiative to put in the necessary hard work – so put that necessary hard work into something you love, not what other people tell you that you should love.

The extraordinary ability to align people and resources to pull off great feats – really, that’s much less common a quality than you realise, and draws people towards you as a leader, even if maybe you’re better as a manager than an actual leader (leaders come up with the ideas and make decisions, managers take those ideas and decisions and make it happen).

By having high standards, you are great at “maximising” ideas and creations – and by that I mean, some people are best at getting things off the ground, and some people are best at making those things as efficient as possible without compromising on quality: the latter is “maximising”, you maximise the potential of ideas and creations. The trick with this is to realise that there is only so much you can do by yourself, and only so much you can do to maximise something, and when it’s as good as you can make it, you have to find your “fuck-it” button and let it get out there into the world. My own balance? About 80-90% good to go is good enough for me, and I’ll run with it as it goes from that point onwards. You’ll find your own balance when you experiment and see how you feel when you let things go.

The main quality to drop, for your own sanity, is the obsession with how you will be perceived by others – because the sad reality is that they are much more obsessed with themselves than they ever will be with you. Those things they say and do to you? Are a reflection of them, not you.

Those people? You could hand them all the gold in the world to try and make them happy, and they will complain that it’s heavy. Really.

So, in kindness to yourself, think and feel into what you really want and need, not what they really want and need, or what you think they really want or need. Stop deflecting from yourself for once. Don’t be scared – it’s only your soul talking, and it never wants to hurt you.

If you are lucky, a wise person might have told you that life is all about ebb and flow.

We live in a world where we can fool ourselves into thinking that we can flow all the time, anywhere, anyhow, regardless of how you’re physically or emotionally feeling; or that we “are allowed to stop just long enough to get back on the treadmill of extreme productivity”.

We are made to feel that if we need to stop, we’re ineffective, useless, worthless.

When did we lose our respect for pulling back and resting?

Life on this planet is largely dictated by the cycles of the seasons, moon and tides – an ebb and flow, not an unending summer – but even nature would prefer an unending summer, to continuously grow and reproduce.

When I motorbiked across Europe and into Austria to be with family in August 2013, one of our last stop-offs was at my sister-in-law’s beautiful farmhouse in the countryside outside Vienna. Our brother-in-law asked us to help him pick the plum trees from a neighbouring farmer’s land because the farmer wasn’t looking to harvest them and they would otherwise go to waste.

Plum picking in Austria.Yes, that is an Elder Scrolls Online hoodie – *I got there first!*

The summer of 2013 was very hot and long, and these plum trees were in the full sun all day, all through the season; consequently, the four trees were groaning under the weight of globular, soft and extra-sun-sweetened plums.

One tree had no cover from the sun whatsoever, no shade cast by the nearby buildings to hide in, so it sat in 360 degrees of sunshine all through that summer. And it showed – the branches were heavy with plums…so heavy that the tree broke in half! It fractured right down the trunk under the sticky sweet masses it had produced!

We got to this tree and unburdened its fruits – all 75kg of it from just the one tree! – but it was too late, the tree was dying a quick death in the continuing scorching sun, its life purpose entirely fulfilled.

The other trees that had shade, amongst themselves and from the buildings at the right angles from the sun, probably produced about 50-60kg of fruit each and lost the odd branch, which is still a huge harvest, but they survived that beautifully gruelling summer and lived to bear more fruit in the coming years.

Even nature prefers unending summers, and might not like trying hard to survive the winters, but without autumn and the survival of winter into spring, deciduous leaves wouldn’t fall and create the mulchy beginnings of compost to bring the cycle back around – all the nutrients of the soil would be taken in continuous growth, unless or until it kills itself in growth.

We must rest in order to grow and produce – we must ebb in order to flow. It’s part of the cycle.

“The courageous life is the life that is equal to this unceasing tidal and seasonal becoming: and strangely beneath all, stillness being the only proper physical preparation for joining the breathing autonomic exchange of existence.”

When did we lose our respect for pulling back and resting?

We lost our respect for the ebb when “being productive” became the mantra for society.

If you’re not being productive, you’re being lazy, which has many negative social connotations, as I’m sure you well know.

The darker side of this is that “being productive” became “generating money”, and “being lazy” became “not generating money” over time. Time and effort exchanged for money.

Before unions, it was beaten into us that this was the case.

But there is a difference between being lazy and being idle.

Being lazy is when you don’t put in the necessary hard work but expect to get the same results, and expect to feel the same way at the end of it. Being lazy is when you just don’t care about what you’re doing, or want to be doing it in the first place, so you put in only a fraction of the effort needed, but still expect to get the same results as if you did care and did put the work in.

Being idle is when you deliberately rest, ease back into yourself, knowing and probably anticipating with glee the next flow.

Ebb.

The tricky part is that, on the surface, it looks no different to “laziness”, but underneath it really is very different.

And deep inside, you know the difference – you know when you can’t be bothered to do something when you really need to, and you know when you are collapsing in a heap because you’re exhausted and can’t give any more.

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible. When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals. Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

This is the last of my series where I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings: show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

The last Core Desired Feeling is…Love.

~*~

What does it mean to me?

To deeply connect with someone else.

It’s not so much because I’m a romantic at heart (romcoms and chick lit are torture for me!), but rather because it is one of the most transformative feelings that I have.
Love allows me to sit here and be entirely who and what I am. It’s an expanding feeling that lets me ease into my space to begin with. It allows me to approach people and life like a blank sheet – no prejudices, no stories, no attachments, just entirely open to what is.

It’s a kind of Freedom.

I feel deeply connected with someone else when I can understand who they are, what they’re thinking and feeling, and what their opinions and values are about the world we’re in.

Love also means for me: focus, or attention.

Whatever I focus on, grows. That can be good and bad:

It can be good if I decide to focus on what I’m grateful for and what I love in my life, because I inevitably end up going out and doing those things that I love more often, or meeting the people I love most in my life more often, or even turning around my finances in leaner times.

When I feel good, I focus more on the good things, and that generally brings more good things into my life.

It can be bad if I end up, one way or another, focusing on all the things that are stressing me out, or worrying about difficult situations I’m in or on the cusp of being in, or just grinding my axe against something I’m in and fight-fight-fighting.

When I feel bad, I focus more on the bad stuff, and that generally brings more bad things into my life.

Now, those are not rules that are set in stone by any means – sometimes, shit happens, and the only way is through it, with all the gory glory that brings; and sometimes, miracles happen, and again, the only way is through it, with the exquisite highs and floating back down to normality (< is that a word? No idea. I’m using it anyway).

Why the word “Love” over other words?

But whilst those words are good words to describe the feeling, they don’t evoke it within me in the same simple way that the word Love does. Even saying the word “Love” tugs a smile at my lips.

If saying the word elicits a physical reaction – either in feeling something, or it makes you smile thinking or saying the word – that’s a keeper. If the physical reaction is bad, that’s not one to keep at all.

For example, the word “Connection” kinda scares me: it makes me feel like I absolutely must connect with people whether I want to or not, and here’s the kicker – I’m a raging introvert, in that I get my energy from being alone with my own company, not so much from being surrounded by people all the time (and yes, “people” includes my other half and even little Missy-kins!).

Of course, that’s not at all what Connection actually means or how it can be integrated. Many other Desire Mappers have “Connection” as one of their Core Desired Feelings – in fact, it’s such a popular Core Desired Feeling that it made it into the Core Desired Feeling Tattoo collections* – but that’s how it feels to me when I say “Connection” – it’s just a no-go word for me.

Don’t worry too much about no-go words – with Core Desired Feelings, you’re after the feeling, and hopefully you can encapsulate it within a word and evoke that feeling when you say the (pass-)word.

How do I use “Love” to guide my goals?

Simple: when I think about my potential goal, does it feel like a whole-body YES?!

If YES! – then go for it

If it’s more of an “Erm…let me think about it” – it’s unlikely to fly, because it means I’m relying on motivation to get me there rather than inspiration.

Love – much like Freedom – is my inspiration behind the goals I choose. It’s a gut reaction, either YES!…or maybe not.

Motivation requires persuasion to persue the goal.

“I want to learn to ride motorbikes because that feeling of FREEDOM is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced, and it’s my reason for living – I gotta have it, I gotta go touring, I gotta adventure and stretch my life beyond what I think is possible!” > inspirationto take up motorbiking – feeling on top of the world every time I ride.

“I want to learn to ride motorbikes and scooters because it costs less in fuel, taxes and maintenance, and I can filter through traffic to get to work and back faster. Overall, I save £xxx per year. Weekend riding and jollies? You’ve gotta be kidding, why would I want to ride for fun?” > motivationto take up motorbiking – saving money. Not gonna love it. Buh.

Love is the inspiration behind my goal-setting.

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

Thich Nhat Hanh once said that to love something or someone is to understand them. I thoroughly agree – because it’s only when you understand that you can act from your best intentions and inspirations, and sometimes, that takes time and effort! But even if it takes time and effort, it’s almost always for the better for all sides.

Spending time with me, myself and I

And by this I mean: looking after myself like how I would look after my most loved one – duvet nights to catch up on documentaries or TV series I’ve missed, a long bath, writing/journalling, cooking and eating yummy meals primarily for myself but for anyone else in the house who wants it too, stretching out, motorbiking, meditating, wild idling, give myself a facial and treating my hair once a week…

If I don’t do those things to take care of myself, within a couple of weeks I notice it: stress seeps in without reprieve, I just feel down, and after a while I can barely function. It’s quite a quick downhill crash for me.

Some people would call this kind of thing self-love. I prefer to call it self-care, or honouring myself instead, because “self-love” is a loaded term that can easily bring in the wolves of judgment,

Do I deserve it?

Am I worthy?

Is there a point?

Because even if my natural reaction is always “YES OF COURSE!”, when I’m down in the dumps, I only half believe it.

Because I’ve got so much I need to do, too many people are relying on me, I can’t let them down, I can’t let myself down either, and I definitely can’t let my dreams down, and if I take time out then it’ll all fall apart and I’ll be even more useless and alone wah wah yada yada tick BOOM…hello burnout.

Here’s a catch:

You have to believe it 100%, unequivocally, honestly, that you are allowed to honour yourself, and that might involve having to get over the fact that the world will go on whether you’re there to contribute to it or not.

The world will keep turning. Tomorrow will come.

Regardless of what you do today.

Good.

Might as well take a little time out to rest up so that I can handle tomorrow well too, y’know.

Spending time with people, creatures or places that make me feel good.

It’s an easy win that’s easy to forget, but spending time with people, creatures or places that feel good is a wonderful thing too. For me, it’s the usual things: spending time with my other half, friends and family, pestering the over-cuddly Missy-cat, spending time in woodlands, being in Austria…

These are the things that I feel Love for and receive Love from.

Love is a cycle of energy that will always loop back to you when you give it freely.

With Love and laughter,

Catherine

~*~

*This is my affiliate link to the Core Desired Feelings Tattoo collection from Danielle LaPorte, meaning that if you click on the link and buy it, I’ll get a little coffee money from it. Now I’d never promote anything unless I wholeheartedly believe in it, but if you’d prefer to browse the Core Desired Feelings Tattoo collection without that, here’s the aff-free link: www.daniellelaporte.com/shop/core-desired-feelings-tattoo-collection-3/

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible. When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals. Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

Over the next several blog posts, I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings to show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

Today’s Core Desired Feeling is…Dynamic.

~*~

What does it mean to me?

Energy. The rhythm of life. Power. Momentum. Flow. Kicking things up several gears and roaring with excitement. The feeling that I am affecting my world.

I love it.

It’s the male side of me that loves action and results, and sometimes needs reminding to sit back once in a while and appreciate those results before heading back out for more action.

It’s the slightly masochistic side of me that loves an endurance, a test of mettle and strength, of getting down and dirty in the scrum of work.

It’s the logical side of me that strives to find efficiencies without losing quality, but will happily take the long way round if there really isn’t any other way.

The dynamo. Dynamic.

You know that feeling of being in flow – when time flies and you don’t realise it because you’re so deliciously absorbed in your work and, on a particularly good day, you get a tonne of stuff done in only part of the time you thought it would take?

Gay Hendricks calls it “Einstein time”, because it feels like you’ve just bent time to get a load of stuff done, when in reality you’re just working with your strengths for once instead of against them.

Those things you’re good at, no matter how strange or mundane? Those are your strengths.

Those subjects you got great grades at in school? Those subjects are your strengths.

We’re taught from a young age to ignore our strengths and focus entirely on our weaknesses.

Those subjects where your grades weren’t as good? We’re told to focus on them to “get grades in those subjects as high as the subjects you’re good at already”, to become more well-rounded…or the worst thing you’re told if you were in the top sets already: “You have to be amazing at everything otherwise you are a failure in LIFE.”

Immediate thought on being told that?

“I’m not good at it therefore I have to work/struggle/fight with it.”

And, the likely thing is, if you have to work harder/struggle/fight with something?

You’re gonna hate it.

This is just one reason why so many kids hate school – because it’s a constant struggle.

And the struggle continues into the workplace – being forced to struggle with the things you’re not so good at, often at the cost of something else that you actually are good at.

But it gets worse: “I’m not good at X” can easily, if we’re forced to struggle constantly with it, become:

“I’m no good.”

If however we are taught to focus entirely on improving our strengths?

We’d all be geniuses.

Sure, you need to be proficient enough at certain subjects in order to live well in this world – read, write, basic maths, ideally also basic science (I’m quite concerned at the backlash against science and medicine right now in certain parts of the West).

But here’s the thing that the current schooling system and workplaces seem to forget: nobody loses if you focus on strengths, because there always will be someone else will help you cover your apparent weaknesses with their own strengths.

Everyone wins.

Dynamic. Working with my strengths and feeling damn good in the ease of it all.

Why the word “Dynamic” over other words?

Like Freedom, Dynamic was another of the first words that tumbled out when I first Desire Mapped with a broken arm and pumped full of painkillers (yes, really!), and it’s one of only two that has stuck with me since the first time (the other one that has stuck since the first time was Freedom).

Strangely though, it’s not really one I’ve questioned either. No other word encapsulates power, potential, strength, and energy in one word for me. Whereas Freedom is the meaning of my life, Dynamic is the energy and force behind it.

How do I use “Dynamic” to guide my goals?

Does the goal in question flood me with energy to go out there and claim it?

Can I easily see my pathway laid out before me to achieve my goal?

Even if that pathway is blocked, do I trust that I will easily find other pathways to get there?

Dynamic is the practical, forward-looking surge when it comes to goal-setting. I use Dynamic to help me figure out how easily I’ll achieve my goals, and also to gauge how much I actually want it. If I’m flooded with energy and get-up-and-go, I’m going for it. If I don’t feel Dynamic when I think of a goal, I’m never gonna suddenly have the inspiration to go for it.

Dynamic is my inspiration – the momentum is my motivation.

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

I write.

One of the reasons I took up blogging was so that I could share my writing with you. I love the flow I get into when writing because it is the easiest way for me to precisely express myself and my thoughts.

I largely write on computer or laptop because I get frustrated with how slow it is writing by hand – I can’t get it out fast enough and that slowness frustrates me and stymies my flow.

Sure, writing by hand is much more cathartic and expressive, but when I have a lot of ideas I want to say, I need a keyboard to keep up with my mind!

I play videogames

…and I go to videogames conferences like GAMESCOM

Yup, I do. I mostly play single player games, because they’re much more about the stories and adventure than online or multiplayer games are. The Final Fantasy series are a big part of my teenhood, as are the old Tomb Raider games before they rewrote the back story over and over and over again to suit different franchising desires (urgh!).

These days I’m playing the Dragon Age series (look, I don’t care if Mass Effect has better storylines in it, no dragons and magic = not interested!), and I love The Elder Scrolls series (yes, Fallout is excellent, but the scenery is a nuclear fallout – it’s not as pretty as Elder Scrolls!). I am currently playing the MMO Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited right now because it’s essentially a prequel to the other Elder Scrolls stories I’ve played (Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim).

I love the adventures and stories because I am actually in the scrum of it creating the story – or so it feels. Books and movies are great, but they’re passive: the story and adventure is fed to you. In a videogame? Your actions ARE the story, your heroics MAKE the story – you are in the game and you are making it happen.

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible. When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals. Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

Over the next several blog posts, I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings to show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

Today’s Core Desired Feeling is…Hope.

~*~

What does it mean to me?

Joy. Expectancy. Purpose.

Trust.

That everything will turn out ok. That I can do it. That I am good enough.

That I am enough.

Chin up, eyes forwards – we got work to do and we’ll love it.

I’ve always been full of Hope. I remember, as a child, playing in the garden in summer and pausing to look up at the moon in the dusktime skies and feeling so overcome with Hope for my future, dusk-dreaming at how awesome my life will be when I grow up: working and serving in ways aligned with who I am, that I will have everything that I need, and there will be love.

But when there were times I lost Hope – my, that aching numbness made me question whether life was worth it. , if I’m really honest. A life without Hope, for me, is a life of being stuck, of no direction, no movement.

It’s Hope that drives me forwards.

There’s a distinction to be drawn between blind hopefulness and Hope. Sadly, from a young age in a lot of societies, particularly Western societies, you’re taught that Hope is not worth having because it can and will be dashed, and the pain of that is too much. We’re taught that it’s foolish to Hope because it’s no different to wishing for the impossible to happen.

What are you going to do about them?

Sure, if you make your dreams come to life, you’ll need a new dream, a new Hope to go for afterwards when the excitement of achievement eventually wears off.

A lesson I had to learn was to actually sit with and enjoy the victory of achievement.

YES!

…and to not immediately say, “Next!”

For me, the whole process of dreaming, then finding ways to make it real, and working tomake them real: I love it all.

Take that away from me? I feel lost – and I don’t like feeling lost: hopeless, powerless, purposeless, entropy, apathy…why carry on?

I have Hope because I am alive. I am alive because I have Hope.

Why the word “Hope” over other words?

It took me a while to realise that Hope was a Core Desired Feeling, to be honest! It was only after going through the Desire Map process for the third time whilst training to become a Desire Map Facilitator that it occurred to me: my life was woven in threads of Hope, and it was one of the ways I really wanted to feel as much as possible.

Sometimes your Core Desired Feelings are so second nature that you don’t recognise them initially, until you deliberately go looking for them – in your patterns and behaviours, in times when you feel like you’ve lost them. Sometimes you can barely put a word on it, let alone an image, or a sound – you just feel it. That’s ok too – giving Core Desired Feelings words helps you invoke them when you need them, but you don’t always need words to describe it: anything quick, easy and almost immediate is what’s really needed to invoke them, so if it’s something you need to do rather than say, then do that thing, and have it easily ready for you to use.

The other reason that I chose “Hope” was because, after learning about the psychology of Hope, there was no better word to describe this feeling evoked within me.

Hope.

How do I use “Hope” to guide my goals?

When I think about my goals, can I feel into the beautiful future where those goals have been accomplished? How will daily life be with that goal completed in my life? And what about everyone and everything else in this future?

If I get good feelings when thinking about this future, then I seriously consider going for it. If I get bad feelings, I don’t choose it.

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

All the goals that feel the best both when going for them and when actually hitting them are the ones that begin with a dream.

For something wonderful.

For something better.

For miracles.

For purpose.

The other aspect of daydreaming is that it allows me to play with purpose and dedication – what will I next dedicate myself to?

Day-dreaming is how you also begin to bond with the possible goals you want to make. The more you bond with goals, the more willingness you have to persevere when you reach obstacles. This is just one aspect of agency – the willingness to achieve a goal and the strength of self-belief that you will achieve it. Bonding with goals helps increase your agency, and the more agency you have? The more likely you’ll achieve your goals.

I spend time in forests and look into the sky.

I love forests above any other landscape: the hustling leaves, the shy lives of other creatures within, the gentle low hum of the tree boughs and trunks, and sturdy ground beneath my feet. I sometimes wish I could become the breeze that whistles through leaves, or become the roots that anchor themselves deep into the ground for a tree to keep it upright. The forest does not care who I am, what I am, or what I look like; it does not make any demands of me, except to respect its cycles – it allows me to be there with it as I am.

I can be. Nothing else matters.

Sometimes it is good to come back to where you are to take stock and reflect on where to go or what to do next. Being amongst the trees helps me come back to me, and quieten down everything else enough to allow desires to emerge.

And when those desires emerge, I look into the sky for what the future will be like with them in my life. I daydream about the possible journeys to get there – the skills I’ll need or want, the things I’ll do, te people I could meet, find my allies, recognise possible issues along the way and convince myself I’ll figure it out if it comes to that.

The earth holds my present, the starting point; the skies hold my future, the distant shores where it will all end.

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible. When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals. Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

Over the next several blog posts, I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings to show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

Today’s Core Desired Feeling is…Freedom.

~*~

What does it mean to me?

EVERYTHING.

It is my reason for living, literally.

FREEDOM!…

…to seek out choices and make them

…to affect things or not to

…to be who I am

…preferably without fears or obligations, but with Freedom comes some responsibilities, the chief one being ensuring that my own Freedom doesn’t come at the cost of someone elses’ where possible.

It’s a strong and euphoric feeling: at its strongest, it’s that feeling you get during a really awesome rock concert and you’re becoming hysterical; at its gentlest, it’s those quiet moments in the morning when you are having tea and toast with strawberry jam and the sun filters through the window, and you suddenly realise: joy – you’re feeling joy surging underneath.

Freedom is my reason for living.

Why the word “Freedom” over other words?

Because it was the first word that bubbled up when I was Desire Mapping for the first time. It just fit.

Sure, there were other synonyms I played around with for a couple of hours – Liberty, Liberation, Free, Euphoric, Joy, Nature…

But none of them immediately evoked the feeling I wanted to describe better than Freedom.

Sometimes the very first word that comes up is The One, simply because it’s your soul cry.

Freedom.

How do I use “Freedom” to guide my goals?

It’s really simple: if the goal doesn’t make me feel Freedom in some form when I think about it, it’s not a goal for me to chase.

Particularly the big life goals – being with my man, bringing my own business to life, and into the future…

If it doesn’t make me feel Freedom in some form or other when I think about it, it’s not a goal to aim for.

I have 5 Core Desired Feelings that guide me, but this is the one that is at the core of the Cores – it has to be there underneath everything else.

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

I ride motorbikes.

My non-biological bestie; passing my motorbike exams; and adventuring into the depths of Austria to visit the KTM factory in Mattighofen…and a little village about 15-20 km away called Fucking (pronounced “Fooking”…what else?!)

It’s not for everybody. It is dangerous, intense, and it requires instinct, alert intelligence – much more than for driving a metal safety cage car – and the willingness to be extremely present with yourself. You also need to readily accept that you might not come back in one piece every time you head out (although the same can be said for every time you drive your car, or get out the front door, or wake up each morning…).

I fully accept.

Because the reward for accepting these things?

Unbridled adventures with yourself in Freedom…without needing to backpack half way around the world to be bitten by mosquitoes in sticky nights (unless that’s really your thing).

Backpacking and motorbike touring do have one crucial thing in common though: the fact you can’t take much luggage with you. For backpacking, you’re restricted to your backpack; for motorbiking, you are restricted to whatever the safe weight limits are on your backpack, top box, tankbag and panniers, provided your bike can actually accomodate these types of luggage – a number of bikes cannot support one of other of these luggage options (my Aveline doesn’t have panniers, only a top box and tank space), meaning that the only guarenteed luggage is your rucksack; however, being pinned onto the bike with the deadweight on your back for hours and hours as you motorway-pound your way to Freedom? Deliciously painful. (Only masochists and endurance-fanatics need apply).

The biggest lesson you learn from backpacking or motorbike touring is this:

You don’t need much stuff in life to be truly happy.

When you cut out the stuff and junk, you realise that you don’t need much in life to

a) survive

b) happily

In fact, the liberation you get from not having your Stuff around is immediate – you’re not carrying the weight around, holding you back, and you feel like you can breathe more freely.

It was this trip that started everything – Provence in south France, just me, my dad, his motorbike, 3kg luggage, a small cabin with no electricity…open skies, fragrant forests, fresh food to cook, sunshine, quiet. When reduced to the absolute basics, you learn individually what makes you happy. Then you need to bring that you into your life as much as possible.

Sure, we all need creature comforts – just don’t let the creature comforts lock you in place.

Freedom is also a state of mind. If you find that your head gets full of noise regularly (like mine!) and you don’t think you have much time or inclination to meditate, this short exercise, taught to me by Lianne Raymond, has been a real mind-saver:

1 – set a timer for 10 minutes

2 – sit or lie down somewhere

3 – DO NOTHING.

Do not read. Do not listen to music. Do not meditate. Just do absolutely nothing for 10 minutes.

What does this do?

When you force yourself to just STOP – you stop Doing and give yourself space to Be.

And if you’re purpose-driven, goal-setting, goal-achieving, over-achieving, duty-driven, and fear the nothingness of stopping: yes, you will feel uncomfortable, for at least half of the time you’re doing it, and it might feel like it’s lasting forever.

But it’s only 10 minutes. And the feeling afterwards?

Aaaahhhhhh. Freedom – the gentler side of it, the effortless side of it.

The realisation that you are already free and don’t need to do anything to prove it or earn it.

We. Are. Freedom.

~*~

Next week, I’ll show you the feeling that has been with me all my life and which continues to pull me into the future: Hope

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible. When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals. Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

Over the next several blog posts, I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings to show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

Today’s Core Desired Feeling is…Female.

~*~

What does it mean to me?

Primarily, it evokes {Unity} in me:

Of body and soul– those moments when I feel my soul is firmly-gently tethered to my body are the moments I feel whole; feeling whole, or otherwise easing into myself, makes me feel very Female.Of vulnerability and strength – we unfortunately still live in a world where a woman’s appearance is valued more than her actual skills and strengths, and where a woman is considered to be a valuable commodity instead of another human being.

It matters to me because I didn’t used to feel this way. You know when you live so far in your mind that you use your body to achieve the things that your mind wants? Whilst that is satisfying…it also never ends. That empty feeling of going through the motions but not actually feeling anything, probably not enjoying yourself as you’re going for your goals?
That never-enoughness that doesn’t go away, even if you feed it with goals and achieving what you set out to achieve.

Female brings all of me back together and helps me find meaning in the things I want and do.

Female is a moderately quiet aspect of me – it’s always there in the background, but it’s not as loud and feisty a feeling as Freedom and Dynamic for me. I love it all the same – the softening, the gentle acceptance of myself and the way the world feels.

Why the word “Female” over other words?

When I did The Desire Map the first time, I actually came out with “Feminine” to evoke this within me, however I was never entirely happy with the word. The word just didn’t fit me – saying it out aloud felt a bit too “girly” for me.

Yet, “Divine Feminine” also wasn’t right either – it felt too majestic for me, and as if I wouldn’t be able to turn off the spotlight when I wanted to.

The other thing that didn’t sit right with me is this: I also have very male or masculine qualities – the logical, pragmatic, practical, Dynamic, forward-looking, videogaming, motorbiking side of me – and adopting “feminine” felt like it would completely exclude this part of me. And I love men, maleness, have real affection for masculinity – not Magic Mike style rippling muscles (*really* not my thing), but that driving energy that’s bristling under the surface that men tend to have, and their particular brand of comraderie. “Feminine”, to me, denies me access to that.

So I wanted to keep the “male” with me. “Male”, yet not quite male. Unity of male and un-maleness.

Fe-male.

Female.

The beauty of The Desire Map is that we might all be feeling the same feelings, but they are evoked in us in different ways depending on our histories and tastes. For someone else, “Feminine”, “Divine Feminine”, “Priestess” or “Earth Mother” might evoke the same feeling that I desire, but it’s evoked in me when I say “I am Female.”

How do I use “Female” to guide my goals?

Whereas Freedom and Dynamic eagerly race ahead, make plans, engage 6th gear and pull the throttle back – Female is the part of me that will whisper in my ear:

“How will that make you feel? How do you want to feel?

How will we all get there together?”

Female brings much loved unity to my decision-making – because it’s all very well steam-rolling ahead with objectives, tasks and to-do lists, but if they don’t feel good whilst I’m going for it or achieving them?

It’s just not worth it.

Female is the subtle side that shows what’s worth going for and what’s worth burning.

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

I have a thing for perfumes and wear one every day.

I’m a bit of an ophresiophiliac and love tuberose-based perfumes. Probably my favourite fiction book and movie of all time is “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind because of the way they made your mind imply scents by overpowering your imagination and other senses (not so much for the wanton murder Grenouille does…).

Currently I’m wearing The Fragrance Lab’s #148. The Fragrance Lab was an immersive perfumery experience at Selfridges in London in 2014 that profiled your personality and gave you the perfume that matches your personality type. You went on a journey through several rooms with audio, and you made choices based on the situations you were put into – choosing scents, choosing objects and so on – and at the end, an engineer would ask some final questions before presenting you with the perfume that matches your personality. My one has rose, tuberose, jasmine, vanilla, tonka bean and neroli – a bit nostalgic-romantic.

I also really love Shantoung by Galimard. My first motorbiking road trip abroad was to Castellan in Provence, France, and since we were near Perfume Mecca (a.k.a. Grasse, where 80% of the world’s perfumes are produced), I begged my dad to take me to one of the perfume factories for a tour. I really recommend it because they give you a tour showing the history of how perfumes were made in the past and how the processes have modernised, plus their prices are really reasonable when compared to the mass-produced, massively-marked-up “designer” ilk.

Music also evokes Female in me each day.

I listen to music a lot, partially because I have a 4 hour round-trip daily commute to my day job, but also because it expresses some of the unexpressable within me.
I’ve had my MP4 player for some 10 years now, and it’s still working surprisingly well!
Artists that bring out different aspects of Female in me:

– bras that support beautifully, soft and comforting fabrics against softer parts of my body.

That’s such a cliche, I know – “wear good underwear to feel a million dollars”. Except that it’s true for me. I first read about the importance of wearing the right fit from Camilla Morton, and how great underwear makes great outerwear – your makeup and outerwear is only ever as good as your foundations. I worked briefly as a lingerie girl at M&S, and it just reinforced the importance of well-fitting underwear.

But it also goes a bit deeper than that – it wasn’t until relatively recently that I was comfortable with my breasts. Don’t get me wrong – I was always grateful for them and for their good health…yet, they were always “something attached to my chest” rather than being part of my body.

What changed that? For me, it was when I just decided to stop settling with a “good fit” and finding bras that also felt great to wear and made me feel beautiful underneath my clothes. And suddenly…I felt myself softening into my clothes, into myself, into my breasts. I was eased from my head back into my body. The rest of the day went by quite easily and gently.

It’s only when you create routines that support your Core Desired Feelings that you can feel the way you want to feel every day, not just when you’re goal-chasing.

Next week, I’ll show you the heart of my Core Desired Feelings: Freedom

Laughter,

Catherine

P.S. Did you miss the chat about Desire I had with Tamara Romaniuk earlier this week?

Don’t worry – hear it here:

Desire is a feeling that polarises people into two extremes – totally in favour of it, or totally against it. Such is the case with all strong feelings. No matter which way you look at it, desire has a profound effect on your life.

Wanting.

Wishing.

Requesting – when your desire is your prayer.

Longing for something that will bring you satisfaction – something that is difficult to admit to, so you’d probably say that you long for your loved ones to be satisfied: because their satisfaction becomes your satisfaction. “Happy wife, happy life” is just one saying that regularly crops up in this respect.

The synonyms for desire give you a broader understanding of how we use the word:

covet, fancy, wish, aspiration, hunger, thirst, craving, yearning, longing, or otherwise a feeling that impels one to the attainment or possession of something.

From this, you can see where the more negative connections with desire come from:

Temptation– the “wrong” kind of desire, which implies that your actions will cause someone or something else to lose something in order for your to gain. Many aspects of Christianity points to this as a feeling that will be justifiably punished if acted upon (even if felt), if not by others, then by God.

The hunger that cannot be satisfied – you know the pain this causes, that deserving and grasping kind of desire: to be better than everyone else, to beat everyone else, to be elevated above them all in some way. Sometimes it’s referred to as “Alpha” behaviour. Ironically, if you asked someone who is behaving in this way if they’re happy? It’s highly likely they’d say that they aren’t happy at all. Aspects of Buddhism shows you how to free yourself from this kind of desire. More on this point a little later.

Because the thing is: you would only behave “badly” – falling into temptation or acting out on your hunger – if you deeply believed that the results of it would make you happy.

“If I just got that promotion/job, I’ll be happy.”

“If I just won the lottery, I’ll be happy.”

“If I just lost a couple/10/20/30 pounds of weight, I’ll be happy.”

“If I just got that man/woman as my partner, I’ll be happy.”

“If I just got that car/TV/smart phone/tablet, I’ll be happy.”

“If I just eat that slice of cake, I’ll be happy.”

“< insert your craving here > – if I get that, I will be happy.”

Yes, desire can be “bad” in these contexts. Of course, indoctrinated morals and being taught what’s right and wrong will generally put a stop to this behaviour from nearly the get-go, leading to certain behaviours being carried out covertly – adultery, theft and worse.

But desire isn’t inherently bad…

Danielle LaPorte had an email conversation with a Buddhist Lama as part of her research into desire, where she asked if there was a “right” energy of desiring enlightenment. The Lama replied:

“Your question is at the heart of liberation; how to want, have an aim or goal, but not be in a state of desire or clinging. The simple advice is: You can’t! There is desire…The art of it is to keep asking yourself quietly: Am I being pushy? Is my desire for freedom clean or is it tainted with all kinds of emotional overtones? In my desire to be free, am I harming myself or others around me?”

In this sense, if there is a “right” energy of desiring enlightenment, it is: to want with all your heart, but to ensure that nobody else is/will be harmed as a result, and to not get hung up on the actual results you are after.

Trickier than it sounds.

Think back to that hungry desire that cannot be satiated – the Alpha behaviour so widely derided – they’re not happy, either in their striving or in their results.

It’s because their desires – hungers, temptations – are driven by other emotions:

feeling a lack of love, respect or attention from people in their lives, or in their past but which they keenly feel today;

feeling a deep need to prove themselves to somebody or something;

f-f-f-fears – of what will happen if they revealed what they actually wanted and going against the grain for it, instead of striving so hard to be or have THE BEST…as dictated by society, the media, and everyone around you.

*That* is the behaviour that religions and society denounces.

But desire is not about attaining or acquiring possession of something: it is to want with all your heart, but to not get hung up on the exact outcomes. When you get underneath the things you believe you want? That’s when your true desires are revealed.

Maybe you actually crave Freedom (capital F please!), and you hope that getting enough promotions and saving enough income will allow you to retire early, or pay off your debts early – and yet you actually feel more caged than ever, slaving for many more hours over your contracted week “to feed it into your bonus.” What if that bonus doesn’t come?

Maybe Freedom for you is actually working less but having enough income to pay the necessities and a bit more; spending time with your family; motorbiking across the continent with barely 5kg luggage – you, a sleeping mattress, and the wide world outside; maybe freedom is in travelling the world and enduring marathons for that exquisite high…or maybe freedom is your state of mind.

Or what if your true desire was to Love and be loved – can that only be satisfied by findinghim, or her? Or can you feel Love every time you connect with another being, either the two-legged kind or the furry four-legged kind?

The Desire Map is a workshop that helps you reveal your true desires – the ones that lie beneath the things you put on your bucket lists, your wish lists and your To Do lists.

If you could get clear on your true desires and aligned your bucket lists, wish lists and To Do lists with those? Imagine how much you would achieve, and how many of those things you’ll look back upon and say to yourself, “That was really worthwhile, that made my life.”

Who doesn’t want that?

I’m assisting the sensual Tamara Romaniuk run her Desire Map Workshop in London, which also incorporates Open Floor Movement.

Come and get to know us better:

We’re having a live conversation on 8pm BST Monday 20th July about desire, how The Desire Map changed our lives, and why we are facilitating both live and virtual workshops across the world.

I’ve been reading a book over the last couple of months – dipping in and out of it – that has had a really profound effect on the way I see and feel about life and the world. It’s called “Consolations – The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meanings of Everyday Words” by David Whyte. He examines everyday words and explains what the word really means in philosophical, poetic and practical terms; words such as Solace, Heartbreak, Beauty, and Unconditional.

For a Desire Mapper like me, a book like this is invaluable: Desire Mapping forces you to really dig into and underneath words, their history, their meanings, their uses, and examining the individual effects each word has on you and the emotions each word evokes within. Learning this kind of information is what drives you to choose your Core Desired Feelings – the emotional states that you wish to inhabit your life in that become your guiding lights when goal-setting.

A word that caught my attention over the last fortnight is “Pilgrim”.

Accoding to Whyte, “Pilgrim is a word that accurately describes the average human being.” We are all pilgrims through life, never entirely knowing what our destination is, except that the ending is our own ending. Sobering thought, I guess.

If we are all pilgrims, then we are always moving.

“The defining experience at the diamond-hard center of reality is eternal movement as beautiful and fearful invitation; a beckoning dynamic asking us to move from this to that.”

Movement is not just about dancing and exercising, although these are great expressions of movement.

We are also moving through time and space within time and space. We set goals. We chase our dreams.

“We are so much made of movement that we speak of the destination being both inside us and beyond us; we sense we are the journey along the way, the one who makes it and the one who has already arrived.”

We are so much made of movement, made for movement, that if we do try to stop ourselves moving, that fragment of us we feel is left behind makes us feel sad the further away in time and space we move away from it, whether we want to or not.

This is why we tend to feel a need, or even a pressure, to move onwards – the pressures from within, not from cold, unfeeling outsiders yelling at you to “get over it!” – because movement happens all around us: time, space, other people, other life on the earth, the sun will rise another day, the earth will keep moving through space.

Whilst you might want to stay still,and whilst you might even need to stay still: to do so for too long will ultimately cause more sadness.

Movement therefore isn’t just about dancing or exercising – movement is about pulling each aspect of yourself together to move forwards through space and time: body, energy and soul.

And when all aspects of yourself come together?

That’s your personal power in action.

Not “power-over-someone-or-something else”, not domination – this is dominion.

Dominion is the power that gives you self-assurance and self-trust in your own abilities to achieve what you want to achieve. Dominion is the power that makes you feel like you can take on the world and win.

Dominion is the power that makes you come alive.

Imagine how powerful your dreams and goals could be if you dreamt from this place of dominion?

But…how can we reach inner dominion? How can we reunite body, energy and soul?

Through your body.

Your body is what tethers your soul and energy here in this life, on this planet.

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Catherine Haymes wants you to know that you are safe, you are held, you are loved...always, whilst you are here.

She helps you recover from dieting and repairing your relationships with food and yourself.
She doesn't just want you to relearn how to eat, she also wants you to deepen the quiet moments in your life with cooking.
She helps you seek your undisclosed desires, nurture and let them flourish into your world.